After spending the first two years of my college career in the flat, concrete-coated wasteland of Middle Tennessee, stepping foot on the campus here at ETSU was like breathing good air again. I fancied that the red brick buildings had simply sprung from the earth, and developed through some mystical plant-like architecture among the grassy knolls and intricately shading branches. A perpetual buffer of trees stands at the south horizon of campus, just beyond the Culp Center – such an integral piece of the background greenery that it often goes unnoticed.
People on campus will notice when it is gone, however. Most members of the ETSU community probably don’t realize these woods will soon be cut. ETSU and the city of Johnson City are cooperating on a plan to build a road through the center of the woods in what amounts to a subsidy for an out-of-town developer, Virginia-based LB & J Limited, which owns Seminole Ridge apartments. The road will run from Seminole Drive through the woods to intersect with Southwest Avenue below the crest of the hill. According to e-mails circulated among faculty, construction could begin any time now. (In addition, ETSU administrators report that they have plans to develop future student housing in the area).
On a sunny afternoon in February, I wandered into those woods – in part to fulfill an American Literature assignment that required me to observe nature, wherever I could find it. I carried my little slip of Xeroxed paper reminding me to ‘live deliberately’ and my pen ready to record my experiences.
The path at the foot of the hill is wide. Mud sticks to my soles. Dilapidated signs from an exercise course built in the 1980s instruct me on how to do Achilles stretches, sit-ups, push-ups and vault-bars. Roots intertwine together here, weaving thick and natural barriers against erosion, holding the hillside in place. Uphill, the climbing, winding trails become narrower, and the dim outline of buildings vanishes in a network of branches and dead leaves. The bustle of the daily activity of campus life re-cedes to a white noise of cars on the main roads, and an occasional whistle of the train. Here is seclusion, peace and the adventurous excitement of standing among hundreds of trees – most of which are two or three times my age, though some oaks and beeches at the crest of this rise could easily be 100 years old.
At the top of the hill, I stumble into a small grove of trees, where thin logs have been stacked like two small walls. Within this alcove, I find boxes, bottles, plastic fruit, bits of lace – the major ingredients to any proper still-life. My artistic soul is not the first of its kind to explore this hidden universe. I feel a deep kinship with the surrounding landscape, and an immense feeling of sanctuary settles upon me as I take my seat at the foot of an oak and set pen to paper.
The beauty I reveled in within the confines of the Culp Woods is, unfortunately, to be a short-lived one. Soon, a portion of these woods will be bulldozed. The line of surveyor flags through a stand of pines thus provides a note of foreboding. This solitary refuge from the flurry of campus life, this secluded nook of creative inspiration for students, this interactive natural classroom used as a teaching resource for the biological sciences, will soon come under the harsh, metallic crush of land-clearing machinery.
In the not-too-distant future, then – when your eyes glance over to the parking lots across the street from the Culp Center, your gaze will meet not a sea of green, but rather a sea of concrete, streams of jammed traffic and steep buildings looming above the rest of the campus. ETSU will have lost one of its greatest resources, one of its natural assets that made it unique among its competitors, and its landscape will be irrevocably altered.
Devon Asdell

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